r furniture; even milk-pans moved with
unwonted celerity. But she left them clean, clean and shining.

"There!" said the girl, "now we shall do well enough till dinner-time.
I'm going into the village. Anybody want to come?"

Priscilla jumped up. "I do, unless Trudy wants to more."

Gertrude shook her head. "I'm going to put up tomatoes," she said,
"the rest of the ripe ones."

"Don't you want help?"

"Not a bit. Tomatoes are no work, at all."

Elliott dashed up-stairs. In a whirl of excitement she pinned on her
hat and counted her money. No matter how much it cost, she meant to
say all that she wanted to.

Her cheeks were pink and her dimples hard at work playing hide-and-seek
with their own shadows, when she cranked the little car. Everything
would come right now; it couldn't fail to come right. Priscilla
hopped into the seat beside her and they sped away.

"I have cabled Father," Elliott announced at dinner, with the
prettiest imaginable little air of importance and confidence, "I have
cabled Father to find out all he can about Pete and to let us know _at
once_. Perhaps we shall hear something to-morrow."

But the next day passed, and the next, and the day after that, and
still no cable from Father.

It was very bewildering. At first Elliott jumped every time the
telephone rang, and took down the receiver with quickened pulses. No
matter what her brain said, her heart told her Father would send good
news. She couldn't associate him with thoughts of ill news. Of course,
her brain said there was no logic in that kind of argument, and that
facts were facts; and in a case like Pete's, fathers couldn't make or
mar them. Her heart kept right on expecting good tidings.

But when long days and longer nights dragged themselves by and no
word at all came from overseas, the girl found out what a big empty
place the world may become, even while it is chuck-full of people,
and what three thousand miles of water really means. She thought
she had known before, but she hadn't. So long as letters traveled
back and forth, irregularly timed it might be, but continuously,
she still kept the familiar sense of Father--out of sight, but there,
as he had always been, most dependably _there_. Now, for the first
time in her life, she had called to him and he had not answered.
There might be--there probably were, she reminded herself--reasons
why he hadn't answered; good, reassuring reasons, if one only knew
them. He might be tem